Mercedes has announced it has no intentions of working on a new automatic transmission with more than nine gears.

Mercedes has announced it has no intentions of working on a new automatic transmission with more than nine gears.

Ford, General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai are all developing automatic gearboxes with ten speeds, but Mercedes says it will stick to its 9G-TRONIC. This is the promise made by the company’s 4MATIC all-wheel drive system engineer, Marcus Sommer. He motivated this decision by saying the nine-speed auto transmission is the best after the company analyzed no less than 81 billion different computer simulations for gearbox scenarios.

Back in 2012 we heard ZF’s CEO, Stefan Sommer, saying the nine-speed automatic transmission is the “natural limit.” He mentioned adding more gears would increase weight and complexity that can’t be offset by the fuel efficiency gains.

Volkswagen was also working on a ten-speed transmission, but several months ago the company stopped development. As for BMW, its small and midsize cars chief, Klaus Frolich, declared last year nine- and/or ten-speed gearboxes are not being considered since the benefits are “almost zero percent.”

Daimler’s 9G-TRONIC debuted back in 2013 on the rear-wheel drive E350 BlueTec where it replaced the old 7G-TRONIC. Since then, a lot of models have made the switch to the new transmission that brings a significant increase in fuel economy and refinement.